


We Make Our Memories

by MarionThorne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarionThorne/pseuds/MarionThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco and Harry are two men who've never had a real childhood. Perhaps now they can start over. Post-war AU-type thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Make Our Memories

From his cozy position, which in this particular moment happened to be sitting on his bed, under the covers, next to his sleeping lover, he really had nothing to do besides observe the blond or allow his mind to wonder. Of course the first was his choice option, but as tended to happen when he was allowed free time, the latter happened nonetheless.

Even now, it was still incotigable to think that he had entered into a romantic relationship with the ever infamous Draco Malfoy. He mused that had someone told him such while he was in his early years of schooling at Hogwarts, he would've thought them absolutely mad. Though his feelings, and Draco's as well, had evolved beyond what they were in their school days, he could still remember vividly the sensations even the word, 'Malfoy,' could invoke in that time. Everything was blistering and fierce, passionate regardless of to which extreme of emotion they both had felt.

A hatred expressed childishly had possessed two boys which had seldom in their lives experienced true childhood.

Neither of them liked to talk about the past; the past was wrought with pain and unpleasant sensations which made Harry and Draco alike uncomfortable. The hate was only a single factor. Harry mused that one of the single likely things to keep the two of them from becoming friends was Draco's schoolboy hatred (though he was shamed to admit that eventually he felt the same way).

Of course they had known very little about each other during school; again he wondered how he would've reacted in a situation of friendship back then. 'So let me tell you about my life, Potter.' No.

The two of them started simply after going through so much to finally begin to live. Harry liked animals, particularly snakes, and one of his favorite daily pleasures (besides Draco) was food. As things worked out, Draco loved to cook; he, however, liked only snakes and snakes alone. He called all other animals disgusting and alien, as Harry recalled it.

Next they moved onto deeper things, like plans for the future. Draco was at a loss to what he wished to do with himself for quite some time. At Harry's recommendation, he walked around places familiar to him in order to allow his thoughts to clear.

To his surprise, he eventually found himself standing at the edge of Hogwarts' grounds, staring up at its rebuilt towers, which were studentless still for rebuilding and generally getting back together. He could remember reading somewhere that the magic within the castle had been disturbed during The Battle and had yet to settle. He could only faintly recall hearing mentions of portraits being lost in other paintings and the stairs being fickle before he decided that Hogwarts would be the place he would find his knowledge.

He walked slowly, as if his body was bound by a thick mist. His feet moved at a normal pace, yet it felt as if he was being sucked into a time long passed. Naturally, the first place he found himself was the Slytherin dormitory. He raised his hand up to run along the green walls accented with silver here and there. There was no comforting fire illuminating the room only just so as he was used to, nor were there any plush green couches or love seats for gossiping teens to sit on. The room was slightly dusty; he wondered if the house elves were on leave until the castle was rebuilt. The dust helped remind him that this room was a thing of his past, strange as it felt to him. Now he was only Draco Malfoy. He was not Draco Malfoy, son of the esteemed Lucius, nor was he the son of the worthless Lucius; he was not the Slytherin Prince, and he was not the Death Eater.

He entertained grim thoughts of his father on his walk to his next destination. Lucius never really had been a father, now that he thought about it. He couldn't remember his father ever being around in the early years of his life, and when he did arrive in a flourish of expensive robes and stern stares, Draco didn't feel anything but intimidated by him. That quickly changed as time progressed; Lucius taught him the do's and don't s of wizarding aristocracy, the best way to manipulate people to get what he wanted while at the same time remaining immune to any attempts by Draco, and, most importantly Draco thought at the time, how to be a Malfoy.

He frowned at the thought. The Malfoy name at present was nothing more than a token for scorn, and looking back, it was never something positive. There had once been people who had feared the Malfoys or were persuaded by blood money; ever since the end of the war, all the negative deeds committed in the past blew back in the Malfoys', or mainly Draco and Narcissa's, faces.

At the very least, he'd been able to spare his mother as much unnecessary pain as possible by tackling the public head on. She was not a bad woman and honestly did everything she could solely for her son. He wanted to make up all the time he had spent as his father's pawn to her, since he had never really been her baby boy. He'd really never been a baby boy, only a tool crafted to suit the needs of the wielder.

That was, if anything, the biggest reason he hated his father: that man was the reason that he had lost any hopes of childhood. Perhaps, he mused, if Lucius hadn't given the she-Weasel that cursed diary in second year, he might have been able to reconcile with Harry. Maybe, without his father, he could have had a real chance at a good childhood with good friends…

Stopping outside the door to the Potions classroom, he hesitated to open the door. And here he stood outside the domain of the man who was likely the only reason he'd had Hogwarts as easy as he had. Severus Snape, he thought, was a rather misunderstood man. His godfather, while stern to a level equal to Lucius, knew exactly the right things to say at the right moments. He remembered, as a kid, times when Snape had ridiculed him or purposefully not given him important information and he had become so angry; now, he respected the man for it. He was far more of a father, even though he was actually his godfather, than Lucius had ever been.

Still, he looked around until he spotted the desk he'd been partial to taking and thought that there hadn't really been any childhood around Severus either. Sure, he had been present every day since Draco's educational career started, but there was no gentle guidance on how to improve, none of the, "I'm sure you can do it, it'll all be okay, I love you more than anything," nonsense that never actually meant anything most of the time. Instead, there was the reassuring, yet never spoken, "I'll be there as much as I can."

He didn't even realize that his feet, slightly more less dragged down upon than before, had taken him to the headmaster's office. Dumbledore's office, Snape's office, McGonagall's office. It had belonged to quite a few people for his short time at the school. He stepped onto the statue's platform, only to relish in the feel of past incidents. Most of these incidents were preceded with punishment. He didn't expect the statue to spin, bringing him up into the familiar space.

The room was in disarray; it was not the familiar neatness with which Snape had kept it, no was it the organized chaos Dumbledore preferred. Instead, it was as if a stranger had come and made themselves at home in a place he or she didn't belong. There was no blasted fire bird trilling at him from the ceiling, nor a ridiculously large stack of junk that looked like it belonged in a, "We Buy Useless Used Crap," shop. Raising his wide silver eyes to just beyond the desk was a portrait. It had not been there before, and he couldn't conceive how they had painted a dead man.

Severus Snape was seated regally behind the headmaster's desk, leaned back and just waiting to be put on the wall where it belonged. His black robes rose and fell with his breaths, which was the only indication of any magic in it. Since he was asleep and had not woken to Draco's entrance, he was probably still in the process of being painted.

Draco smiled, glad to see some of the attention the man deserved was finally being paid to him. He headed back home with a spring in his step and an answer.

"I kind of expected that this would be one of your ideas, honestly," Harry told him after he'd returned home late at night from his journey.

"What do you mean? I didn't even know myself!"

"Well, you were always bloody brilliant with potions." He stopped a moment to roll his eyes at the self-satisfied grin Draco gave him. "Oh, don't start brushing your feathers. But now we've got to figure out where you're going to work. Not to be mean or anything, but uh… well, most of the apothecaries don't really approve of your past."

Draco smirked. Oh, silly Harry and his lion-headed nature. ' _He should really learn to think before opening his mouth._ '

"Oh, so you've been going around looking up my job opportunities, have you?"

Harry reddened and spluttered. Before he could choke out an answer, Draco was laughing and then he was as well; Draco was laughing at him, not with him, and for some reason he always found that to be endearing.

After they had managed to calm down, basking in the afterglow of laughter, Harry looked into his love's eyes from behind his glasses; his own eyes were slightly closed, a reflex from being pushed into a smile. "You know, I think we should celebrate this."

Draco looked at him questioningly, yet with a teasing smile. "What, me having a mental epiphany that I want to become a potions master is worthy of celebration?"

"Of course it is! It's worth so much; and if you think it isn't, that doesn't even have to be the reason. Maybe we could celebrate being together, or alive, or just for no reason. I mean, there's nothing wrong with celebrating just to do it, right?"

"Alright, alright. We'll go tomorrow, alright?"

Perhaps their big day out wasn't all that extravagant, but it was certainly an experience neither of them had the pleasure of taking part of before.

The first thing accomplished was actually convincing Draco to watch the Muggle movie. He said it couldn't possibly be entertaining at all, and was even more unconvinced when the only things airing were horror movies. "Like Muggles could know real horror."

Harry, on the other hand, found curling up next to his lover, with disapproving glances from the people around them ('What's crawled in their asses and died?' 'Muggles aren't generally as accepting of gay people as we are…' 'How positively archaic!').

When they left the theatre early, Harry having just vomited the popcorn he had eaten onto the pavement and Draco looking only slightly more composed, Harry wished he'd been to a movie before so he could at least know what to expect.

Draco was absolutely appalled to state things lightly. "What the fuck is wrong with those Muggles? They've got to be absolutely bloody psychotic to enjoy something like that!"

"Well, maybe that was just a rare occurrence we were unfortunate enough to view…" Harry tried to reassure his view of Muggle past times in the hopes this wouldn't put Draco off any future occasions.

"I'd hope so! For fuck's sake, people were decapitated, electrocuted, blown to bits, and had their blood drained completely dry!"

"Let's just… pretend we didn't watch that and go on with the rest of the night." Or salvage it; whatever the case may be.

A stroll on the beach couldn't possibly go wrong, right?

Once they were successfully down to their swimming trunks, which they had been wearing under their clothes, the two made off down to the sandy shores. This all, of course, was nearly not accomplished after the almost PDA worthy snog they had shared in the stalls.

Even for his generally 'up-tight', as Harry said, standards, the beach was an exquisite place. Simply walking down the waterline, hand locked in an unbreakable hug with Harry's, the sand yielded gently beneath his feet; the air was moist, which only served to please the skin on a slightly overwarm day. The waves rolled up to the shore before returning to their home, which was currently being festively lit by the sunlight upon its dancing surface.

"It's beautiful," Harry breathed.

Draco looked over to him, and that familiar entity within his chest melted and glowed in a way similar to the appearance of Harry's eyes, which were currently reflecting the dancing sunlight. Beautiful indeed.

A thing suddenly struck him. "Wait, you've not been to the beach before?"

Harry looked at him sheepishly. "Well, you haven't either, so I figured the whole thing would be a mutual learning experience."

Before he could retort that it all could have been absolutely dreadful as far as Harry knew, he quietly asked another question, almost timid in the way it escaped his lips. "And you hadn't been to the movies before, either?"

It hadn't really been a question, but Harry shook his head in a negative nonetheless. "The Dursleys didn't let me out much."

Draco noticed the sad way Harry's eyes looked down, almost as if ashamed that he hadn't been able to say for a fact that the occasion would be enjoyable because he himself had never experienced it. He brought his hand up to Harry's cheek, cradling it gently and looking into those eyes before leaning in for a tender, heart-warming kiss. He, too, felt sad for some reason at the realization that only now were both of them experiencing these things that they should have been introduced to as children.

Their foreheads came to rest against each other after their exchange ended, lips only barely touching and liquid emerald meeting molten silver.

"I hate those bastards, but at least they couldn't take this from you." Harry's mouth opened up to question him, but he silenced him with another kiss. "Now we can have these precious memories all to ourselves, and they'll never be tainted by anything from the outside world."

Slowly but surely, Harry's mouth turned up at the corners and Draco's mimicked it. An outsider would see two people grinning at each other, foolishly in love and in a world of their own, shared only with loving orange sunset and waves tugging at their feet for attention. They would only see each other.

"Yeah. I love you so much, Draco. So much."

"And I love you, and I promise you that you will always have that."

**Author's Note:**

> And there we have it! Glad that you guys have taken the time to read this, as I think this is one of the first fictions that I've ever actually been happy with, even though I know it doesn't really lead to anywhere.
> 
> I had actually gone to a tumblr with a lot of prompts in order to help me write something, anything, and I came across the prompt, "Kids not acting like kids." For some reason, this automatically made me think of Harry and Draco.
> 
> Anyways, for those of you who listen to music while you write, here is the playlist I used during this:
> 
> Robot Boy – Linkin Park; Tawagoto Speaker – Hatsune Miku; Dear You – Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Soundtrack; Love is War – Kaito ver; Das Beste – Silbermond; Sing – My Chemical Romance; Feels Like Rain - Kesha


End file.
